Televangelist Pat Robertson on Monday
defended a North Carolina law that targets the LGBT community,
calling it “perfectly reasonable.”
North Carolina's law, House Bill 2,
prohibits cities from approving LGBT protections and bars students
attending public institutions from using the bathroom that does not
conform to their gender at birth.
The law has spurred companies,
politicians and artists to speak out. PayPal
and Deutsche
Bank have halted expansion plans in North Carolina, while several
cities and states have instituted non-essential travel bans to the
state, the
latest being Los Angeles. Pearl
Jam and Boston
this week canceled upcoming shows in North Carolina, adding their
voices to a growing list of artists protesting such laws.
Robertson told his The 700 Club
viewers that he was “simply appalled” by the backlash to the law,
which he called a “perfectly reasonable” attempt to protect women
and girls from men pretending to be women to gain access to the
girls' restroom.
Without supplying any facts, he added
that many people who identify as transgender are frauds.
“People like that are relatively
rare,” Robertson
said. “So much of this other stuff is put up, it’s put on
and it’s just a fraud. And it’s one more opportunity for the Left
to demonstrate against some aggrievement they claim to have that
doesn’t exist. This is a phony, phony, phony cause to get involved
in. ‘Well, I’ve got to look after the transgenders.’ This is
nonsense.”